Part 1

Democracy is on the Line

by Kwame Nkosi Romeo

Democracy is on the line when the dialogue between state and citizen breaks down. Democracy is on the line when countries flirt with autocracy to pass unpopular laws and governments deploy state forces to repress lawful resistance.

- 2023 ITUC Global Rights Act Index

We all agree that democracy is on the line in Antigua and Barbuda, and we must defend ourselves against the criminal Antigua Labor Party (ALP) government by any means necessary. Most importantly, we must expose the bullshit rhetoric by Ronald Michael Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda Ambassador to the US, assigned to Washington but generally lives in Barbados. 

Is the embassy residence in the US or  Barbados? 

Point out any CARICOM member Ambassador doing likewise. There is none! In truth, people must revolutionize their circumstances and defend themselves against the penning of Antigua Labor Party (ALP) propaganda and Sanders repeatedly ducking serious national issues while glamorizing the ALP government's autocracy. Still, disregardable of human rights abuse, electoral fraud, human trafficking, exploitation, kleptocracy, and dormancy of LIAT(1974) LTD. In addition to a long list of ALP prime minister Gaston Browne's climate change transgressions of disastrous projects, endless dredging, devastating coral reefs, and the livelihood of fisherfolks and the community. 

Sanders twisted the people of Haiti's harsh reality of life to deflect Antigua and Barbuda's unqualified leadership and economic oversights by insisting criminal gangs are leading the protest and following on prime minister Browne's defamation of the Freedom Fighters For Antigua and Barbuda (FFFAB) rally on August 8, 2021, as being: "Partisan tugs posing as freedom fighters."

These depictions by Browne and Sanders are nothing new; right-wingers usually use such statements interchangeably. Pay regard to the US occupation of Haiti from July 28, 1915, to August 1, 1934, and the five years of revolutionary resistance of Haiti's CACOs battling that occupation. The US media and Marines singled out the CACOs as bandits and pillagers. Nothing different from today; it colonizes the minds of the gullible with the often repeated news broadcast " gangs controlling 80% of Port-au-Prince." This blatant propaganda allows the invasive forces to bolster the criminal elites' continued looting of the country's financial resources. (Haiti 1915: The truth behind American Occupation)

The invasive forces comprising Kenya, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, and Suriname can expect Haitian revolutionary resistance! This invasive force occurred nineteen years after UN peacekeeping involvement from 2004 to 2017. The UN involvement triggered a cholera disaster on October 10, 2010, that killed 10,000 Haitians, and subsequent investigation confirmed the culprit to be the UN Nepalese troops. Now Sanders is continuing the UN tradition of sourcing troops for monetary reward!

Is Sanders defacto prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, formulating the nation's geopolitics?

Sanders most irrationally initiated Antigua and Barbuda troop commitment and is now shifting blame to the influential countries responsible for resolving Haiti's dilemma. Now, a few CARICOM countries two-facedly support Haiti's unlawful government and the slave-driver sweatshops of oppression. However, the masses' supreme power must abolish and reorganize the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of power, cultivating better livelihood for the citizenry! Sanders's pretext is tied to fighting corruption and defending democracy. Both need to be added in Antigua and Barbuda. 

What about Haiti's acting president, Dr. Ariel Henry, ruling by decree

Generally, protestors retaliate against the administrators of injustice, gang violence, poverty, deplorable public services, and rising inflation rate! That's why widespread protests and coups to these cumulative disadvantages will continue in this political economy. 

Does Sanders believe so-called gangs influence US Autoworkers or the most prominent Healthcare workers to strike for better pay, and are these gangs controlling 80% of New York?

These protests confirm corporate injustice and the manifestation of rising inequality as determined in Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscript of 1844:

"On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and indeed becomes the most wretched of commodities..."

One of Haiti's many prolonged labor protests was on Monday, June 26, 2017. Haiti factory workers took to the streets with placards of independent declaration demanding higher wages amidst the threat of textile factory closure: "Long live the independent fight for factory workers."

Indeed, the people commanding Haiti's uprising are revolutionaries, descendants of Cacos resistance fighters, again objecting strongly to plantation colonialism and corruption! Still, Sanders fails to account for the less than 1% controlling Haiti's economy and the criminal holding public office as the root of the ongoing insurrection in the Apartheid state! Dem dey ah de real gangs, and the Five Eyes know that fact.

Sander is tone-deaf to the vibration of the Global South resistance and a local people's sense of purpose toward democracy. That democracy is a political organized crime; it is a dictatorship in disguise! This argument rubbishes the nonsense Sanders continues to write in parallel with the ALP money-oriented political ideology to the Cooks Dump, Antigua's sanitary landfill! Like countries readily tossed out Sanders's bid for Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat (SGCS) in favor of Baroness Patricia Janet Scotland, the majority will quash another of Sanders's ambitions: to be Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS).

How could Sanders want to be OAS SG governing 35 nations with distinct languages but oppose Haiti as a member of CARICOM based on that likeness is racist and anti-democratic?

There was a grand issue of corruption looming over Sanders, with many questioning his experience, lack of political astuteness, and dignity.

An astute writer to The Starbroek News on March 12, 2021, elaborated on Sanders's shortcomings and that such a high-profile job as SGCS requires much more knowledge than being Antigua and Barbuda High Commissioner to the UK:

"With due respect to Antigua, I cannot see what experience one can acquire in that capacity to entitle one to run the Commonwealth that comprises almost two billion people and some of the most powerful governments in the world."

The fakery of Sanders's achievement is well known, like the quack hack scheme used by the ALP government to cover up APUA corrupt lootings and relate mutually with the regime of bandits. Transparency International defines corruption "as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain." 

Sanders has no right to shake down others and disregard criminals within the ALP government. Ask Sanders about deposits in The Principality of Liechtenstein and many offshore jurisdictions before he talks about criminality and sending the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on a useless scare tactics mission while covering up the ALP government's unchecked corruption. That's what the FBI needs to investigate!

Another example is Independent MP Asot Michael declaring Attorney General & National Security Minister Steadroy 'Hogzilla' Benjamin "..the most corrupt criminal." 

No doubt Benjamin is trustless but not the most corrupt since Michael outweighs Benjamin on that scale! Most credible is Mafioso Vincent Teresa, author of the book My Life in the Mafia, who characterizes Antigua as the most corrupt country in the world: "One of the places I took a look at was Antigua in the British West Indies. You couldn't have found a more crooked place if you tried..." pg 213

Inescapable is a most recent lawsuit concerning the Russian seized Alfa Nero yacht by the ALP government that's on the sanction list of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). This sanction prohibits the sale of the Alfa Nero without US approval. Not relevant to OFAC sanction is the bonafide owner of the yacht, Yulia Guryeva-Motlokhov, daughter of Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev. The vessel is not owned by Guryev, as determined by the OFAC. So it's time for the ALP money-grabbing saga to end and hand over the Alfa Nero to Yulia Guryev-Motlokhov! 

A series of corruptible sequences became known, with criticism of the ALP government influencing the sale. Accusations were leveled against the government by Warren Hall for not being given the right to ownership as the second highest bidder since Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, became reluctant to proceed due to bureaucratic delay tactics. So Halle decided to bring legal charges against the ALP government:

Warren Halle v Port Authority Case: ANUHCV2023/0248 on July 10, 2023, which includes the Government of Antigua and Barbuda and the Attorney General. Halle's solicitor, Damien Benjamin, of Benjamin Steadroy & Co Chambers, undertook this case.

Was Halle swayed to select solicitor Damien Benjamin, the son of the Attorney General?

This Alfa Nero package deal is an apparent conflict of interest, and in this instance, Damien should have recused himself from the case.

To be continued